I am having a crisis of faith. I thought every child was supposed to matter. Yet just this week, I came across a 12-year-old boy whose story suggests otherwise.
Picture this: you leave home to go to school one Friday morning, the school bell goes at the end of the day and you are collected, but instead of returning to the home you left that morning you are taken to a new home. Your new home.
That’s it. No warning; no chance to pack your stuff up; no chance to say goodbye to the other boy that was living there with you; no chance to say goodbye or thank you to the staff who have been working with you and caring for you.
How can this happen? The government goes on and on about the importance of placement stability and continuity of care. The draft national contract for children and young people in residential care says that providers should give local authorities no less than three months’ notice of a home closure. Yet here we have an example of a clear lack of planning on one side or the other of a placement arrangement that has resulted in a vulnerable child being forced to deal with yet more sudden upheaval. Whatever the reason, it cannot be good enough.
Fortunately, this boy has landed in a good home that has already pledged to maintain his previous school placement so as to offer him at least some of that much talked about stability. But he did not arrive with all his medical notes, and his sudden arrival has impacted on the other young residents in his new home who had no time to prepare either.
Faced with new surroundings and new faces, this young man displays an amazing capacity for resilience. Sadly, though, I suspect this is not a positive characteristic he was born with, but more a coping mechanism he has developed as a result of being rejected and let down time and again.
An experience like this will do nothing to make this 12-year-old believe that he really matters. Nothing like this must ever be allowed to happen again.
Comments (1)
But it does happen again and again and whatever you try to tell the people with power and money they don't listen.
Should he even be there in the first place? I believe that there are so many children who should still be in their own home with imaginative, straight talking resources keeping them there with the friends that they once had and new ones who understand who they are. Safety should be subtle not blatant and labelling.
Posted by Rachel Mulcahy | October 18, 2007 6:51 AM
Posted on October 18, 2007 06:51